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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

"Vices Are Not Crimes"

Thanks to an excellent article about the perils of government at Laissez Faire Books, I've found an article written in 1875 by Lysander Spooner.

Vices Are Not Crimes

A Vindication Of Moral Liberty

by Lysander Spooner (1875)

I.

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.

Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.

Vices are simply the errors which a man
makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply
no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or
property.

In vices, the very essence of crime --- that is, the design to injure the person or property of another --- is wanting.

It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime
without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the
person or property of another. But no one ever practises a vice with any
such criminal intent. He practises his vice for his own happiness
solely, and not from any malice toward others.

Unless this clear distinction between vices and
crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such
thing as individual right, liberty, or property; no such things as the
right of one man to the control of his own person and property, and the
corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his
own person and property.

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and
to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of
things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood,
or falsehood truth.

II.

Every voluntary act of a
man’s life is either virtuous or vicious. That is to say, it is either
in accordance, or in conflict, with those natural laws of matter and
mind, on which his physical, mental, and emotional health and well-being
depend. In other words, every act of his life tends, on the whole,
either to his happiness, or to his unhappiness. No single act in his
whole existence is indifferent.

Furthermore, each human being differs in his
physical, mental, and emotional constitution, and also in the
circumstances by which he is surrounded, from every other human being.
Many acts, therefore, that are virtuous, and tend to happiness, in the
case of one person, are vicious, and tend to unhappiness, in the case of
another person.

Many acts, also, that are virtuous, and tend to
happiness, in the case of one man, at one time, and under one set of
circumstances, are vicious, and tend to unhappiness, in the case of the
same man, at another time, and under other circumstances.

III.

To know what actions are
virtuous, and what vicious --- in other words, to know what actions
tend, on the whole, to happiness, and what to unhappiness --- in the
case of each and every man, in each and all the conditions in which they
may severally be placed, is the profoundest and most complex study to
which the greatest human mind ever has been, or ever can be, directed.
It is, nevertheless, the constant study to which each and every
man --- the humblest in intellect as well as the greatest --- is necessarily driven
by the desires and necessities of his own existence. It is also the
study in which each and every person, from his cradle to his grave, must
necessarily form his own conclusions; because no one else knows or
feels, or can know or feel, as he knows and feels, the desires and
necessities, the hopes, and fears, and impulses of his own nature, or
the pressure of his own circumstances.